In the conventional practice of planning a given event, a planner collects the required information from magazines, home pages, etc. and constructs a schedule based on the information after trials and errors. This conventional practice is accompanied by various jobs and the very work of constructing a schedule is cumbersome, which often leads to a planning failure. When constructing a life cycle plan, for example, a very troublesome planning is required for each separate item of events of different types such as marriage, purchase of a residential house, education, etc. In view of this, it has been earnestly desired to develop an apparatus and a method by which the planning job can be easily carried out and the service of constructing a total planning including the life cycle plan can be offered.
Thus, in the conventional practice, a planner collects the required information from magazines, home pages, etc., and based on this information, constructs a plan for a given event (such as marriage, childbirth, purchase of a house or a funeral). Especially when using the home pages, the planner browses the home pages related to the event using a search engine while collecting the required information (names and addresses of suppliers, cost, delivery time, etc.).
An actual plan is discussed from all the angles taking the budget and schedule based on the information collected from homes pages, etc. into account. Usually, the result of planning is noted down in a diary having a calendar or stored in an electronic notebook or a computer as an electronic file. The planner, after checking the schedule in the diary and other references, takes an action and executes the plan by reserving or purchasing items for the particular event.
An event reservation system which enables the preparation for an event to be promoted positively is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 11-120237. This event reservation system has a configuration of client/server type, and if there is any item that need to be taken care of before and/or after an event, the fact is notified to the client of the user through the Internet.
Thus, conventionally, the planner is required to carry out such troublesome work as collection of information, reservation and schedule management. The amount of workload on the planner disadvantageously increases in proportion to the scale of the proposed event.
When collecting the information using home pages, on the other hand, the fact that each home page is independent makes it necessary to collect information over a plurality of home pages. In addition, this job is inconvenient as individual homes pages must be opened once again separately when making a reservation or a purchase for the event. When the result of planning is stored on a paper in the form of a diary, there is a great likelihood that the diary is lost. Further, the prior art lacks the service of totally supporting the life cycle planning or the like service.
The event reservation system disclosed in JP-A No. 11-120237 is effective simply for keeping the preparation for the event in memory. In any way, the planner must construct a plan by himself (or herself), and therefore none of the above-mentioned problems and disadvantages are obviated.